English Dub Review: Ascendance of a Bookworm “The Abandoned Child of the Cathedral and Making Colors”

Overview

Main is finally able to go home. Her little brother Kamil is born and she becomes even more determined to create books. That is when Main meets a helpful collaborator named Heidi, who is the daughter of an ink maker. Heidi is extremely curious and passionate, so she hit it off immediately with Main. They start to make colored inks through trial and error. Meanwhile, a baby is abandoned at the cathedral and Main and her attendants end up taking care of him…

Our Take

The introduction of Heidi I think is great! She seems super enthusiastic about helping Main in her goals and wanting to expand the idea of creating colored ink and that enthusiasm is interesting to see considering how people are reacting. The only problem is that they can’t predict which color it’ll be. Kamil was born and he has blue hair like Main and her dad. It seems like Main needs to be careful cuz the High Priest is plotting something.

On the subject, we also finally encounter the very same unpleasant nobles that Ferdinand has been warning Main about who perceive any sort of change as a threat to their livelihood for some reason. And as predicted, that Pope is conspiring with these fuckers, so I think even if Main hold her product release for a while, she would still have some major problems with them. Also Main got some jobs to raise two babies at the same time, the orphan baby and her own new younger brother.

Overall, so much has happened in this episode. After all of the previous episodes in regards to Main’s possible dark future, this episode was refreshing. Heidi could easily become a great side character if she keeps pressing her curiosity. Honestly, someone like her in combination with Main could advance science in their world by several hundred years. Just figuring out the color changes alone would revolutionize chemistry. And I find it weird that despite running a factory/orphanage and giving the discarded orphans jobs and better living conditions, you’d think someone within that place would know how to raise an orphan baby but at least they named the child “Dirk”. What’s made worse is Dirk being sick which raises more questions than answers on what this sickness could possibly be. Hopefully, the next episode will have Main find a quick solution to this frightening scenario…